media-info-examples

Media Info Examples

Contributors

• Tantek Çelik
• Joshua Kinberg

Introduction

Examples of what people actually publish on the Web when discussing, linking to, referring to media. This is focused predominantly on time based media such as audio and video, but may consider aspects of static media as well such as still images.

Emphasis on Practical, Simple, and Minimal

Since all previous known attempts at this problem area have ended up quite complex and over-designed, this attempt will place simplicity and minimalism first and foremost.

Thus for now, this document is deliberately restricted to examples that are:

• Actual examples in practice on the Web with URLs to the originals (note, all *-examples pages should be like this, but previous attempts at documenting media info examples have mostly ignored this requirement, and thus it is necessary to be explicit).
• Representative of very common publishing behavior on the Web. This focus on common, representative examples is essential. If possible, include an estimate of the number of similar examples. E.g. ~10k.
• Simple and minimalist. As simple as possible. Go read the microformats principles right now before proceeding any further.

Any examples added which do not conform to these requirements will be deleted.

Examples

Audio

Speech

Publication of audio speeches on blogs is often called "podcasting". In essence though, it is simply audio speech publishing.

• Microformats: Web Essentials Audio
  • Appears to be composed of:
    • title/summary of the recording
    • clickable hyperlink to the recording (MP3)
  • Contextual:
    • (primary) speaker is indicated in nearby text

Music

• ...

Video

Publication of video on blogs often goes by "videoblogging", "vlogging", "VODcasting", or "video podcasting". The typical process involves publishing a direct link to the video file within the blog entry. The blog entry can but does not have to include an embedded video player.

• FreeVlog: the most popular tutorial on the web describing the videoblogging process by combining free tools and services (Blogger, OurMedia/Internet Archive, FeedBurner).
  • According to this process, a videoblog entry contains:
    • Direct link to the video file
    • Clickable thumbnail image/screen capture of the video
    • Contextual information about the video (title, description, etc) is usually contained in the surrounding blog entry

• Video Pop Up Maker
  • This example based on the process taught at FreeVlog generates code to create a dynamic pop up window with embedded video player. The reasons for this are enumerated here

• Some video publishing services, such as YouTube and Google Video, convert uploaded videos to Flash Video format (FLV) and attempt to obscure direct download links, only publishing videos using embedded Flash players.
  • Here is an example of YouTube's embedded Flash player in a blog entry
  • Here is an example of YouTube embedded Flash player on the YouTube website
  • Here is an example of Google Video embedded Flash player on the Google Video website
  • Here are a couple Greasemonkey scripts intended to create direct download links for videos hosted on YouTube and Google Video

Next Steps

1. Add more real-world, simple, minimal examples.
2. Research and organize existing/previous media-info-formats, with a focus on formats for publishing common, user-visible media information.
3. Start media-info-brainstorming based on examples.

See Also

• media-metadata-examples - previous attempt which is a bit of a deep-dive mess, and includes formats which should be in a separate page. Probably useful as both a source of research.